


ENCORE

by angstangelo



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Theatre, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-07-03
Updated: 2016-07-05
Packaged: 2018-07-19 19:07:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,737
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7373854
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/angstangelo/pseuds/angstangelo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>“That’s the pretty thing about acting, Phil. No one thinks anything on stage is wrong, because we’re playing the fool, acting out of a madman’s brain, and none of it is meant to be real.”</i>
</p>
<p>AU series where Phil meets Dan on one of his excursions to see yet another entirely irrelevant play. Involves typicalities, tension, and tragedy that the set of Romeo and Juliet wouldn’t be able to survive through.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Part 1

The boys behind Phil jostle as they leap down from the bus, shouting insults and making rude gestures at the people driving past. Someone steps on the back of his shoe. He stumbles, sighs, and wriggles inside the stiff collar of his ironed shirt. Next to him, PJ laughs at his gloominess and punches his arm, none too softly.

He almost trips again.

“LIGHTEN UP, PHILIP,” he shouted, voice almost lost among the rest of the pubescent guffaws. “YOU LOOK LIKE YOU WANT TO BE HIT BY A CAR.”

 _You’re not wrong,_ Phil thinks. “Maybe I _DO._ ”

“C’mon, man, it’s not that bad.” PJ tells him distractedly, warding off someone else’s soggy oreo in his face. “We’re getting off double English for this.”

“Double English is _fine_ ,” Phil says defensively. “Also, in case you haven’t NOTICED, we haven’t even read the play and I paid fifty bucks for this. And it only lasts for half the day, and then we gotta go back to school. And you know what happens when we get back to school? PE. Physical ACTIVITY. I go and watch this bloody play, and then I have to go back to SCHOOL, and I need to strip down to shorts in 3 degree weather, and play _football._ ”

“Chill,” PJ says flippantly, but he laughs loudly, punching another boy as he tries to box him. “There’s boys in leggings.”

Phil thinks that his eyeballs might be stuck to the top of his head, he’s rolled them so excessively.  

“Not every play has leggings, Peej,” he grumbles, but PJ thinks he’s definitely cracked through to him, and he grins, infuriatingly smug, curls of brown hair flopped over his careful, snobby part. “See?” he cackles. “It’ll be fun.”

“It won’t be fun,” Phil responds halfheartedly, but he allows his eyes to come back down from their condescending rolling, and lets himself be swept along with the roiling mass of boys through the front door of the theatre, lurching through into a lobby-like section of the building.

He scuffs his schools against the deep, rich red of the carpet, staring out at the gloomy clouds through the glass walls, grey lights reflecting off the clouds and passing weakly through the shiny surface. It’s fascinating, until a group of boys push in front and cut off his view.

 _One day,_ Phil thinks. _I’m going to steal all of these rich boy’s money, and build a house made completely of glass walls._ Momentarily comforted by the thought, he watched the bundle of frazzled English teachers frantically look for someone to consult, until a woman in a shirt somehow possibly crisper and whiter than their own uniform marches out and gestures for them to follow her with a closed, lipsticked smile.

Looking like they’ve seen the virgin Mary herself, Phil and the other boys follow the woman at the command of their feeble-voiced head teacher, and pile into a theatre marked with a bold 3 on its door. Phil trails his hand onto a table piled with programs, but snatches his hand away as he sees the sadistically cheerful calligraphy of ‘ _$3 each’_ printed on a placard sitting on the same table _._ Of course, they’re gone anyway by the time he’s five metres into the theatre, only a handful of them replaced by tossed coins into the plastic container.

Shuffling between the velvet seats behind PJ, and dropping into one a few seats from the edge, Phil has a private moment of contentment as he sinks into the plush seats and watches the thick curtains sift slightly from the heater. A program folded into a paper plane sails crookedly past his head. As much as Phil didn’t find it necessary to be here in there first place, he feels sorry for the actors that had to put up with their audience skills. He peers around him, looking down at his row. Another school enters through the same door as the last dregs of his grade trickle in, co-ed this time. They titter among themselves, shirts untucked and wearing stockings with rips stretched along the thighs, and Phil quickly loses interest. He looks ahead at a girl with short hair dyed bright scarlet against her pale neck, the back of her school jersey emblazoned with ZHANGSTER. She turns to talk to her friend, the corners of her eyes catching his, and Phil turns away quickly, cheeks heating up. PJ nudges him, smirking.

“She’s pretty,” he whispers.

“Not wearing leggings, though,” Phil says sarcastically, which makes PJ laugh. The lights dim, and a semi hush treads over the theatre uneasily, a trio of girls behind him still furiously whispering to finish telling each other a story about someone who broke their wrist playing basketball.

A circle of neon pink skips over the glossy stage, the navy of the curtains looking black as they draw away from the edge. Another spot of colour joins it, and then another, eerie in their brightness as they spin among the mostly silent crowd of audience. A purposely crackly soundtrack plays, and the actors come on, whirling in a dance around a mock fireplace and all wearing bits of cloth over – Phil decides he _hates_ PJ – black leggings. Next to him, PJ stuffs his tie into his mouth to stop himself from sniggering.

The people on stage circle around their ‘fire’ hypnotically, swirling gracefully. One of the guys has his shirt off, and the girls behind him giggle. Phil’s seen enough of abs in the boys change rooms, and the rippling shadows off the actor’s chest only makes his own abdominal muscles contract in a sympathetic attempt to redeem themselves.

The characters on stage break out of their dancing in a smooth, effortless motion, and they station themselves around the slightly curved stage, facing the audience. One of them looks straight towards Phil, gaze steady and perfectly poised into an emotionless mask. Even with the lack of expression, the intensity of the boy’s face turned towards him still makes Phil colour, uncomfortable heat creeping up his neck. Phil, feeling obligated to keep the steely gaze, watches him back awkwardly, aware of the scratchy chair fabric on the back of his neck, and PJ’s impatiently drumming hands. Barely moments later, the tension dissipates as fast as it was established, the boy’s dark irises flicking away as a lady glides onto the stage and begins to talk. Phil sinks back down into his seat, a new kind of exhilaration for the play washing over his insides as the actors start to move and talk and make their place on the stage. PJ, ever the old fashioned artful critic, hums in approval, glancing over at Phil quickly, his face aglow with barely contained excitement.

The curtains close to the smattering sound of applause as the same red-lipped lady from before announces intermission, and the audience surges upward in a swell of stretching and conversation. Phil stands up and flexes his arms satisfyingly, blinking rapidly to get used to the bright light after the dimness of the theatre. The schools flock towards the exit, crowds of teenagers out to undoubtedly try and seize whatever food they could gather from the candy bar and meagre popcorn machine before the ten minutes were up. PJ stood next to them, making for the door. “You want anything?” he says. Phil shakes his head, and PJ shrugs. “I’ll save you my unpopped kernels,” he says. Phil rolls his eyes.

PJ seeps out along with the rest of the audience, and soon, the hundreds of people were reduced to about a dozen. Phil looks around, not really wanting to sit down again since his butt kind of ached from the seat. He walked towards the stage, glancing upwards at the fall of curtains and ropes. A ladder was fixed to the ceiling, and several ropes hung in the wings. He touched the floor of the stage, a lot less smooth up close than five rows away. The wood felt slightly sandy, and he ran his fingers along the planks, feeling the grittiness, wondering how it would feel to skip on it barefoot. He looked up just in time to see a pale face peek out from one of the wings, and Phil starts, whipping his hand back behind him, like the stage was some kind of metaphorical cookie jar he was banned from touching. The face raises an eyebrow, and with a brief flash of surprise, Phil realises it’s the same boy back from the very beginning of the play. He doesn’t say anything, and neither does Phil, but they look at each other, Phil’s eyes darting nervously as the red rises back up his neck.

“Er,” Phil mumbles, not wanting the remaining ten or so people to think he was talking to himself. “Hi?”

The boy’s face lights up with amusement, and it’s such a sharp contrast to the fierce dismissive nature of his first impression that Phil wonders if it’s the same person at all. “Um,” Phil says awkwardly. His clear discomfort only seems to make the boys expression brighten even more.

“Can I come up?” Phil asks. He looks at the wooden flooring, and at its height off the ground. It came up to just under his shoulders, and thinking back to the horrifyingly terrible attempts he had at gym, he decided against it. “Actually,” he says. “Can you come down?”

The actor – now that Phil thinks about it, didn’t look any older than the other seventeen year olds in his grade. In fact, he might’ve looked slightly younger, his face soft edged around cheekbones and a jaw that hadn’t really come up yet. The actor worried the end of the curtain with nimble fingers, flicking his head back into the wings, and Phil cranes his head forward to see if he was still there. Moments later, his face reappeared and he scampers towards Phil, keeping to the wings, and came to a stop at the edge of the stage, slipping down and swinging his legs over it, hands gripping it next to where he was standing. Phil brought his elbows up onto the lacquered wood, and the other person crossed his ankles. “Hey,” the boy says for the first time. His voice was higher than Phil’s, but not to the point where it was girlish, instead more of a lilting just-settled-in-for-puberty kind of octave. Up close, Phil could see his eyes were less of the hollow black the stage lighting made them seem, but a dark syrupy brown. His hair was a several shades lighter, strands slightly straw-like in their texture. Phil guessed he probably used a straightener on them more than was entirely necessary. His costume had been swapped for a plain white t-shirt, though the tights stayed. The lightbulbs gave a glowing sheen to the black stretch of fabric.

“Are you even allowed to be here?” Phil asked. The boy swung his ankles and winced at his question. “ _Technically_ no,” he says. “But it’s not like they need me, and Louise and Chris are too busy getting their makeup done to care too much about where I’ve gone, so it’s cool.”

Phil snickers. “What kind of actor sneaks out of their dressing room to take a look at a lot of teenagers instead of stressing about, I don’t know, hydrating?”  

He looks at Phil with the raised eyebrows. “Have you heard me say _anything_ during the first act?” he asks teasingly, as Phil’s face scrunches up in panicked memory. “I don’t really need to chug down a litre of water. Plus, if I did, I’d do it during one of the major scenes where I don’t need to be worried about fighting some primary role for the water cooler.”

Phil fights back a laugh at the thought of this slight boy wrestling a lady with an impeccably made up face over a tap. The boy next to him smiles uncertainly, a curious glint in his eyes. “And believe it or not,” he says. “Teenagers make a more interesting scene than I could ever manage to act out.”

He stuck out a hand, slim fingers steady. “I’m Dan,” he announces. “Chorus boy number 3, and proud member of Britain’s Youth Productions. Nice to meet you. Wanna autograph?”

Phil stifles another bubble of laughter, and takes Dan’s hand. “Phil Lester,” he smiles. “Not-so-proud scholarship kid.”

Dan flips his hand over after a firm shake, and produces a sharpie out of nowhere, biting the lid off and scrawling his name of the back of Phil’s hand. The felt tip of the marker tickles his skin and the ink stands out starkly against his half-translucent skin. He dots a colon next to the D, so a cheerful smiley face now stood on the back of his hand.

“Thought you looked like a smart kid,” Dan says as he caps the lid back on and let’s go of Phil. “You one of the private schoolers?”

“Yeah,” Phil answers, trying to not smudge Dan’s name as his fingers automatically wander over the itching skin. “Love it. Really.”

Dan sniggers. “I could see one of them trying to pick up a chick in the front row when I was on stage,” he says. “Pretty sure he got ignored and the girl started snogging her friend next to her.”

“Serves him right,” Phil snorts.

Dan wiggles his eyebrows. “Her _girl_ friend _._ ”

Phil coughs, and shrugs. “Still. Everyone in my school is a Grade-A asshole. Except for PJ, maybe. He’s alright.”

Dan grins. “He your special friend or something?”

“Not so much special as stupid,” Phil mutters. Dan laughs, and Phil feels a strange satisfaction in being the one to bring the sound out of this boy.

Just then, the PA system lets out a booming woman’s voice, one that Phil recognises to be their host, announcing that intermission was ending in 3 minutes, not so much advising as demanding for the schools to return to their seats. Dan looks back at Phil after the message ends with a static click, a longing apparent on his face that wasn’t there before. “I should get going,” he said. “I still gotta…hydrate.” His face breaks out in a grin, but his voice is unsure. “See you?”

Phil glances up at him as Dan stands up. “Yeah.”

People are beginning to trickle back into their seats, and Phil knows Dan shouldn’t be here, out in the open. “You should go,” he says reluctantly.

Dan springs up and and sweeps into a bow. “Farewell, Philip,” he cries, loudly enough for the same red-haired girl that Phil had seen before – to glance, intrigued, in their direction. “We shall meet again, I’m sure of it.”

Phil struggles to keep his eyes where they are. “Just go, idiot,” he says under his breath, but he grins as Dan gives him a final lit-up smile, and dashes back off to the wings.

He shrugs apologetically to the girl still staring at them, delicate features crumpled in confusion. PJ waltzes in with two tubs of wilted looking popcorn, and Phil takes one of them gratefully, dipping his nose into the buttery kernels and munching one of them with contentment. His sleeve slips down, covering the scrawled signature. “Ew,” PJ wrinkled his nose. “You’re so gross. How’re you going to ever make it through a movie date if you always snuffle your popcorn?”

Inexplicably, Phil thinks of Dan, and his hopeful, expressive, antics, and he snickers to himself. “If they can’t put up with my snuffled popcorn,” Phil says. “They’re not gonna be able to deal with me at all, so it all works out in the end, right?”

“You’re going to die alone.”

“Thanks for the food, Peej.”

“They were both meant for me, actually,” PJ retorts.

Phil offers him the snuffled popcorn, and PJ bats his wrist away. “Don’t be disgusting,” he complains.

Phil laughs, and tries to tuck a leg against his chest as he sits back on his plush seat as the lights begin to dim again. He looks to the stage, and is almost disappointed as the solitary silhouette of the female lead grows more distinct. He sighs, sits back and pops another piece of popcorn into his mouth.

Dan only appears once more throughout the second act, sitting in his ragged costume in a cult-like circle around a chanting woman. His eyes are shuttered, and he sits very, very still, none of his energy apparent in his posture. Phil marvels at his control. The light flickers over his skin, and his pale complexion, though nowhere near as light as Phil, was a perfect canvas for mapping out the bright colours of the stage, limbs casting long, elongated shadows over the wood.

During bows, Phil maybe have imagined the extra flourish Dan made in his direction, but he hollered along with the whistles of his grade, until his voice came out as a soundless rasp – unlike him, because PJ looked at him incredulously as he all but stood up in his overzealous applause.

“The worst way to spend your time, huh?” PJ asks wryly.

“Yup,” Phil tells him cheerfully, amidst the yelling, “Absolutely awful.”

Phil tries to hang back even as the production crew starts wheeling the set backstage and PJ’s already left with an exasperated ‘do-what-you want’, but Lipstick Host chases him out eventually, shoving him out the door and threatening to call his teachers. Phil, finally, with his high school education on the line, leaves slowly, eyes lingering on the wings. _Oh well._ He thinks, trying not to let the disappointment eat at him. _I was probably one of a billion people he’s talked to today. He probably doesn’t even remember my name._ Phil looks at the back of his hand, twisting his other hand around the wrist, and shoulders his backpack, walking to the door where the rest of his grade waited for their name to be called, trying not to let the bitterness drag his feet.

Just as he’s going to leave, situated at the back of the horde of boys, a hand clamps down onto his shoulder, and he turns, letting out a startled _wah_ as the force of the hand almost overbalances him entirely.

Dan stands in front of him, cheeks pink, short sleeves fluttering in the wind outside and slipping off a slim shoulder, hands dropping to his knees as he tries to swallow and catch his breath simultaneously. He looks up at Phil – he’s a few centimetres shorter than Phil, now that they’re on the same level – and points an accusing look at him.

“ _You_ ,” he says breathlessly. “ _You_ said that you would see me again.”

“Actually,” Phil says, trying to be nonchalant as his heart hammered. “You made that deal.”

“Yeah but-” Dan swallows. “You’re meant to work with me here, asshole.”

Phil grins at him. Dan straightens up, attempting to regain his dignity, and punches Phil’s shoulder in a way that was definitely meant to hurt. Phil narrowed his eyes as he grunted from the impact, but then widened them as Dan grabs his hand and laid it face up. He places a small square of paper in Phil’s palm, and curled his fingers around it.

“I ran here for you,” Dan said dangerously, glowering. “And I _despise_ running, scholarship kid. So you better take that dumb piece of paper and do exactly what it tells you to do it, hear me?”

Warmth floods Phil, which probably explains why he did what he did. Phil crushed the winded brunette against his chest and squeezed him hard, the smaller frame fitting comfortably with his limbs. Dan spluttered, but he reached around Phil’s shoulders and squeezed equally hard. “You gotta,” Dan emphasises near his ear. Maybe he imagined it, but Phil thinks he detected the smallest tremor.

“Gotcha,” Phil says, as he releases him. “See you ‘round, Dan.”

“Moron,” Dan said. “Your bus is leaving.”

Phil yelped, and ran towards PJ, yelling indistinct words of distress. As he did, he took a last glance back at the boy standing in the entrance of the theatre, arms folded stubbornly. He waved, and Dan raised two fingers to his forehead and saluted him. Phil turned, then, and held that last memory of him in the slip of paper in his hand.


	2. Part II

Dan doesn’t know what compelled him to follow Phil out into the street. He had another show in barely 15 minutes, it was fucking _cold,_ and he hadn’t changed, standing only in a fluttering t-shirt. Now, as he wandered back into the theatre, the goosebumps standing up on his arms, and hairspray stiff over his already terrible hair, he mused faintly about the boy, twirling a sharpie in between his fingers.

 _I’m probably never going to never cross his mind again_ , he contemplated. Dan shrugged to himself, mostly to convince himself of his own unconcern, but the thought still itched at the back of his brain, like a line that wasn’t delivered quite right. Still, it was probably just the effect of being around someone his age, he thinks.

Dan allows himself to flit through the cities that he travels through, winding and unwinding his fingers to generate some kind of warmth. There was a girl two stops ago, with her tiny form and brown eyes and hair too long for a seven-year-old tumbling down her back as she squirmed out of her seat and waved at him while he was onstage. She’d had a dog that he’d seen once. Dan remembers the frizzled fluff in his hands and brief warmth of its weight as he hugged them both goodbye just before he left for the next town. He remembers last spring when he’d played dead for two hours and a dark skinned boy had toddled up to him with wide eyes when he finally sat up and asked him what it was like in heaven. The memory sends a wave of pleasure, and he whistles the tune of that musical, smiling absently.

Then there was that one time, a few weeks ago, when an old man has tittered and pointed a stubbly chin at him and told him he should be in school and doing something with his life instead of prancing around like a ballerina girl, and Louise had almost pushed him into an early grave. Ironically enough, it was Dan that had pulled her back, stifling a laugh at the man’s snort of superiority as he stalked away.

He can’t remember the last time he attempted to talk to anymore between the ages of fourteen and eighteen in the time he’s joined the BYP. The forced kindness of the blonde boy in his last foster home, maybe. But for a long while, it’s just been him, Louise, Chris, and a sprinkling of a couple other regular members. He played understudy and chorus parts, as well as the occasional tech guy, and they fed him and paid him at the end of every week and let him pass out in 3 star hotels that changed every other day. Still, Dan fell asleep feeling like he earned it, an emotion that that was familiar, and still as satisfying as the very first day in the dubiously lukewarm sheets.

Louise had wanted to throw him a sweet sixteenth, his mind supplied. Almost a year later, Dan’s still fighting for his rights to have a quiet, non-extravagant teenage years, thinking that they’d melt into adulthood soon enough and he wouldn’t need to rely on anything if he tried hard enough.Though she was only 21, a performing arts degree tucked under her name, Louise might as well have given birth to him herself with the amount of care she took in making Dan feel as much a part of them as she could. She was the only explicit help that Dan would accept, because he vowed that he’d give her anything in the world when he was could. Chris, slightly older, was what Dan liked to believe kept him sane, and was the main reason why his sarcasm and dirty jokes flourished. Dan liked him, and Chris seemed to have a gruff respect for him – “You are one lucky freshman,” he’d said in the first week. “Too bad the rest of us are the equivalent of stale baguettes.” He’d made Dan laugh for real for the first time in months, and they’d stuck to that system, trading vague insults and stealing complimentary packets of maltesers.

The click of the backstage dressing room forces himself out of his own mindful waffling, and he’s greeted by a face full of makeup lady – “You went outside in the _wind,_ are you _crazy,_ You’re on in five _minutes -”_ Dan surrenders to the desperate batting of the brushes against his cheeks and the sweet smell of hairspray. In her cheap swivelling chair, Louise watches this with a disapproving twinkle of laughter, trying very hard to turn towards him without rustling her perfectly manicured curls.

“The hell _you’ve_ been?” she comments, trying to pull at a blond lock only for it to spring back in the exact same position. Dan shrugs, but he’s not sure its seen through the flurry of activity going around his face. “Was talking to someone before.”

Louise tuts. “You need to stop doing that. The boss is going to have your ass.”

Dan snorts. “I’ll tell him I was in in the loo.”

“For twenty minutes? _And_ Intermission?”

“Unpredictable bowel movements,” Dan says cheerfully. “Blame it on the B&B food and he’ll shut up.”

Louise wrinkles her nose. “That bread was literally mouldy though.” She squints at him. “You sure you don’t _really_ have diarrheoa?”

Dan chokes. “Don’t talk about poop to me, Lou, it’s weird.”

“As long as you don’t give it to me,” she sighs. “Meet anyone cool?”

“Something like that.”

Louise looks at him, smile hanging round the corners of her eyes. “I’m getting back to you on this,” she says. She stands up, skirt swishing around her legs. “But for now,” she says, her voice deepening into an admirable accent, “Someone needs a _lady_ in their chambers.”

Dan smothers a giggle. “Okay, miss.”

“That’s ma’am to you,” she says smartly, thwacking a prop book against his shoulder. “See ya.”

Dan sits in her spinning chair and waves as he swings around. Louise rolls her heavily made up eyes.

“Don’t break it,” she says, and then she’s off in a flurry of layered skirts.

Dan forgets about Phil for the rest of the afternoon, working up a sweat as he hurried in and out of dressing rooms and producers yelled things in loud, hushed whispers as he swept past them, struggling with the copious amount of strings in his costumes. He loves the theatre life, but it doesn’t leave room for any other thought, the constant rush of tassels and people in the wrong place and props that can’t be found. He loves the act within backstage itself, loves the collective sigh of breath during intermission, everyone riding the high of ovations. It’s never, ever, smooth, no matter how much of their life is spent preparing for three nights of the same 3-hour play, and every day is different. He lives, and breathes the show, all of them. All the characters, the smoke machines, the impromptu newspaper corsets.

He doesn’t remember where he comes from in those hours, all his experiences tinted with the red of the stage lights, and anything not worth thinking about curling up and blowing away as ashes.

By the time everyone’s off the stage and the host has finished giving the thank you speech, and all the bows have been bowed and people are rustling with their coat hangers and gulping down water like it’s their life force, its dark out. It was always dark out. If Dan looked outside after a performance and there weren’t stars in the sky, he’d think that there would be no purpose to it. What was the point going into a theatre in the day and then coming out again, in the day, only to realise the Earth was the exact same?

Louise, Chris, and Dan huddle together out in the small corridor as everyone else is changing.

“I don’t think I’m doing dinner out today,” Louise said, voice slightly raspy. “I’m so tired. I’ll take a nap and suffer through the terrible room service later.”

Chris laughs. “Dan, you wanna go get something?”

Dan shrugs on a jacket. Fake leather, fake zips, an array of pen pockets on the inside. He’d stolen it from the ‘broken’ prop container that was about to be wheeled off, and he’d kept it despite everyone announcing its tackiness as soon as he walked in with it on.

“Actually,” Dan says. “I think I’ll stay around here for a bit. Help clean up, y’know.”

“Actually,” Chris mimics. “I _don’t_ know. Since when were you such a saint?”

Dan grins. “Never,” he says. Chris narrows his eyes. Louise sighs.

“Do what you want,” she said resignedly. “I’m too whacked out to care.”

Chris looks between her and Dan. “I’m not going to help you sweep, you know that, right?” he says.

“Mmhm.”

“You better not make me eat frozen lasagne by myself again tomorrow.”

“Nope. Promise.”

Chris holds the door open for Louise as she walks out, and pauses in the doorway with his hands stuffed in his pockets and brown hair falling all over his face. “I don’t even if you’re a kid who keeps promises.”

Dan takes the door from Chris, waving him out. “Guess it’s your chance to find out,” he says. “I know my way to the hotel. I’ll see you both later.”

Louise yells a bye as the heavy door shuts in Chris’ unconvinced expression. He looks at Louise. “You think the kid’ll be ok?”

Louise snorts. “What’s the worst he could do, fall in love?”

Chris shrugs in acceptance. “True.”

When Dan’s sure that they’ve walked away, he bounds right back in the opposite direction, the stairs up to the stage completely deserted. He leaps his way up them – not two at a time though, because he figures people who double stepped were overrated. The still-lit stage is eerie in front of the empty seats, the air charged with expectation. He pauses, relishing in the vacancy and stillness of a space that captivated a thousand people only an hour before. Now, there was nothing that was attractive about the stage, and Dan closes his eyes in the blankness and just for a second, imagines the hundreds of productions here, the resounding applause the walls have absorbed echoing in his ears.

He blinks again, and it’s all gone. He jumps down, and makes his way out of one of the exits, glancing up at a glowing green sign. There isn’t anyone in the lobby either, not that Dan really expected there to be. The carpet mutes his steps to a soft thump.

The cool air outside whistles, an empty threat to him under his jacket. Still, he tenses his shoulders and looks over the fence that ran around the theatre to separate it from a bridge and the road. He’s only been out here once, and had caught the barest glimpse of the river when he watched Phil go. Dan hadn’t thought anything of it, because it was murky, greyish brown and unattractive. Not to the point where it was filled with trash _yet,_ but still, not worth noticing.

An off-key whistle snatches his attention away from the river. Phil stands there awkwardly, in jeans and a fraying blue sweatshirt. Dan’s the last person to judge clothing choices, but with the money practically rolling off their blazers and soft jumpers, he was almost surprised that he wasn’t at least in a tie.

“Hey,” he says. His hands are buried in his hoodie pocket, and Dan would bet that there wasn’t anything under it. The wind blows clumps of his hair around, pushing them around his hesitant face.

“Hi,” Dan says. “You’re not busy?”

“I’ll be okay to hang for a bit.”

Dan studies his willowy form against the yellow glow of the lone streetlamp. “And if I want you for more than a bit?”

Phil laughs. “I’ll find my way around it.”

Dan smiles back, and then looks back at the river, his elbows propped up at the fence between it and the bank. “Does anything live in this?”

He feels Phil’s presence next to him, as he walked towards him, the body heat making his hands flutter momentarily.

Phil looks at him quizzically. “I’ve seen a duck once,” he says. “Don’t think it was having the best day though.”

“Hm,” Dan says, thinking.

He looks up at Phil, eyes playful. “Wanna do something with me?”

Phil’s ‘what’ quickly cuts into an alarmed squeak as Dan hauls himself up on to the fence and his legs dangle over the other edge.

“What are you _DOING,”_ Phil yelps, looking around. He leaned forward and watched as Dan landed with a soft thwump onto the rough ground. The top of his head still peeked over the fence.

Dan grins widely. “I don’t know,” he says admittedly. “Wanna do it with me?”

“I don’t even _know_ you,” Phil whispers loudly. “What if you have a stashed assassin under the bridge and as soon as I come down I get murdered for my assets?”

Dan gives an incredulous laugh. “Why do you have this so thought out?”

“I don’t know” he says distractedly, eyes still flitting around as if he was trying to find a way to fish Dan back up. “The only reason I go to a rich school is because I got in through some exam I did for my mum, you know. I’m actually really not rich.”

He looks at Dan. “Why did you _do_ that?”

“I don’t know.”

“How are you going to get _out?”_

Dan places a foot on the ledge that Phil was on. “See? I’ll be fine.”

“I won’t be.”

“Live a little, Lester,” Dan says. “I promise you won’t be assassinated.”

Phil touches the fence tentatively. Dan watches him encouragingly. He holds his hands out, ever the supportive rebel. “I’ll catch you.”

Phil glares at him suspiciously, and then clambers up. He drops and stumbles onto the pebbles, and Dan’s hand automatically shoots out to steady him.

“You good?”

“I hate you.”

Dan’s laugh rings with relief. “I told you you’d live”

“Don’t jinx it.”

Dan looks over at the river. Phil looks at him looking at the river.

“Not to give you any ideas you don’t already have, but I am _not_ swimming in that.”

Dan looks back at him impishly. “Aw-”

“No. _No._ No way. I’d have to skinny dip because I am wearing _nothing_ under this,-”

 _Called it,_ Dan thinks privately.

“-and it’s literally freezing, the waters definitely toxic, I know I’ll drown, I hate swimming in water where I can’t see and I can barely even see your face-”

“ _Okay,”_ Dan laughs, palms up in surrender. “Okay. No swimming. Cool.”

“If it starts raining -”

“ _Philip,”_ Dan says exasperatingly. He doesn’t know why he uses his full name. It sounds good in his mouth.

“ _Dan.”_

“Truce,” Dan declares. “I don’t do anything stupid and settle for something very boring and you stay and stop complaining. Deal?”

“I’m not-”

Dan shoots him a look.

“Okay. Fine.”

Dan scuffs out some of the rocks around his feet, and plops down. He pats the space next to him. Phil hesitates.

“What, sitting’s too much of a safety hazard too?”

Phil reluctantly sits. “Why’d you make me come out here, anyway?” he asks him, shifting on his butt around the sharper stones.

Dan thinks for a beat of a second. “I don’t know?”

“You don’t know a lot of things,” he mutters.

“What’s the fun in knowing everything?” Dan says, unfazed by his tone.

Phil doesn’t say anything in response. “Are you always allowed to go around jumping into rivers?”

“For the record,” Dan retorts, “I did not jump _into_ the river.”

“You were about to.”

“But I didn’t.”

“Does that matter?” Phil thinks aloud.

“You make a good point.”

“Of course I do.”

Dan’s hand trailed over the rocks, some of them wet with the river water. He picked one up, intending to skip it, but the clouds made the moon seem like a hidden blotch of fuzzy silver, and left things cold and dark, river lapping silently, the murky brown transformed into a pleasing obsidian. If Dan imagined hard enough, he could pretend that the water was blue and clear and filled with swans dipping their pretty necks into the depths. Instead, he just closed his fist over the large pebble, rubbing a thumb over the grooves of its cracks.

He looked over to Phil, as silent as him, and wondered what he was thinking. Maybe he didn't think as poetically, mind enfolded in a world completely different to his, with friends and homework and parents who pretended they were fine with his growing up, and instead carried their grief in little stamps of wrinkles around their eyes instead of their voice. Dan felt the yearning nostalgia for his place in Phil's universe that never had the chance to be filled. Like he could sense the emotion, Phil turned his gaze away from the water towards Dan, curiosity acute in his eyes, the blue in them washed out by clouds.

“Do you have school?” he blurts.

Dan almost giggled derisively at how accurately the question aligned with his thoughts. “No,” he says. “Haven’t had school since I was 15.”

“What’s it like?” Phil wondered. “Is it nice, the freedom?”

“What, like not having a mother to tell me to not jump into rivers?”

Phil paled under the tiny amount of light. “No, I didn’t mean…”

Dan snorts. “It’s fine. I know what you mean.”

Phil ducks his head, turning away. Dan can sense him tensing, and the next beat of silence is heavy with his awkwardness. Phil turns to glance at him at the same time Dan does, and he smiles at him, sadness tinged to it.

Dan kisses him off a whim, the wind of decision skipping off the grey sand around them. Phil's response is lax, alive with questioning as he tenses and tries to figure him out slowly, even as his hand is curling around Dan's and digging it into the rough surface underneath. Dan likes it. He likes leading Phil through something he doesn't understand yet, he likes the feeling of soft and hard at the same time, and the pleasant confusion that comes with it. He likes Phil, and so his body slides towards him and winds his other hand to rub a thumb over the nape of his neck. He thinks that by now, Phil's kissing him back, and it exhilarates Dan, the smell of warm shower and slick moss hanging in between them, suspended in a private cloud of their own.

Dan pulls away first. Phil lets him go. "Oh," he says. It's not sad, and it's not happy, but it's simple. Dan thinks of the water sliding over the pebbles in his hand, drawing over the sharp edges and always withdrawing again, unscathed.

“That’s my kind of freedom,” he breathes. “I can do that, and no one can judge me, because no one will ask.” He exhales. “That’s the pretty thing about acting, Phil. No one thinks anything on stage is wrong, because we’re playing the fool, acting out of a madman’s brain, and none of it is meant to be real.”

He reaches out with his fingers, and traces Phil’s jaw. “It is real, though. Its realer than real. That’s why people watch.” Dan drops his hand.

"Did you mean that?" Phil asks. He's not breathless, and he’s not stuttering. Like he might understand. Dan decides he likes that.

"I don't know," he says. He holds out the hand holding the stone, rubbed dry. Devoid of the grit, it's translucent, quartz like and gleaming like the inside of a shell. He drops it in Phil's lap, and then stands up. The pebble stays in Phil's hand. He doesn't close his fingers over it.

"You should go home," Dan tells him.

"So should you," he responds. Dan smiles at him quickly.

"How can I," he muses. "When I don't have one?"

He swings a leg back over the fence, and walked.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> kudos+comments much appreciated, lemme know if you have any ideas for this story as well!!

**Author's Note:**

> tumblr @lesteresce


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